He walked up and through the door indicated. By the time he got there, his heart was pumping at double speed.
“Don’t look so worried. After the kicking you gave that fence, I’m the one who should be hesitating.”
The owner of the voice looked about ten years older than Doug, a fact he greeted with some relief. There was nothing worse than trying to talk to a child about adult matters. He hoped he wasn’t so young the situation was flipped.
“Sorry about that. I wanted to get in and talk to someone and guessed I could stand out there all day shouting and not get anywhere.”
“Looked more like you had a whole heap of aggression and needed to take it out on something.” The leader patted the cushion beside him and Doug sat down, cross-legged. The ache spreading out across his lower back wasn’t happy about the change in position.
“Some of that might be correct,” Doug agreed. “I lost my job today because of somebody here.”
“Oh, yeah?” The man lit a cigarette, squinting to keep his eyes on Doug even through the smoke. “Who’s that?”
“His name’s Willis, or Wallace. He stole a bunch of stuff off a building site I was working.”
“You got blamed for it, huh?”
Doug tipped his head forward, tracing a pattern on the threadbare rug. “Something like that.”
“He got hired to lift that stuff. No use taking it out on him. It’s your boss you should be angry at.”
“Believe me, I’ve got plenty of anger in me for him, too.”
They sat in silence for a few minutes while the man smoked his cigarette right down to the butt. When he stubbed it out in an old metal ashtray, he shook his head. “You need to fix the gate.”
Now that his immediate rage was dissipating, Doug realized he’d just worked himself into a state for nothing. What had he expected to happen, coming here? It was never get his job back for him. Never going to fix up the fact he might never work again.
“I can bring my tools down here tomorrow and fix it up.” Doug stood up and walked over to the window, staring down with a frown while he surveyed the damage. Someone had propped the twisted metal gate up against the rest of the fence, leaving a gap about a foot wide. The paint had flaked off in large sheets where his boot had punched into the metal, again and again.
The gang leader spoke up again behind him. “Do a good job and I might have a few other things need fixing around the place.”
Chapter Eleven
“That’s how I got to know the gang,” Doug said. He smiled awkwardly and cleared his throat.
Alice didn’t think she’d ever heard him speak for such a long time before. In fact, even if she strung together every word she’d heard Doug say during the long years of their friendship, they mightn’t add up to the same.
“The gang you paid off, today?” Hogarth’s smile had grown ever grimmer during Doug’s explanation.
“That’s the one.”
Doug spread his legs until he hit against Alice’s knee, then seemed to remember himself and stood up instead. “They were good blokes, it turned out. From the moment I fixed up their gate good and proper, they always had another job lined up ready if I needed it.” He shrugged. “Sometimes it felt like they kept me around for their own amusement, but they did more for me than many others I would’ve called friends at the time.”
Alice guessed she was one of the jobs now taking up Doug’s time, so he no longer relied on the gang. She knew he also had regular contracted work through the Department of Conservation and the local council, but she used up as much time as he could give her.
The story was new to her, and she’d followed along with it closely. Until she came to him today, desperate, it would never have occurred to her Doug had such connections, in his past or in his present. To find it out when she needed just that thing had seemed like a gift straight from heaven.
“Don’t you think it’s about time you all told me what’s really going on around here?” The sergeant kept his voice light, but Alice could see the tension straining through the muscles of his body.
“Do you know what liquid gold is?” she asked, aiming her face at the floor to pick up the nuances of his spoken answer.
“In connection with you? I’d guess you’re talking about the Manuka honey.”
“What about when someone uses it and they’re not talking about me?”
Hogarth cleared his throat, impatience spilling into his tone. “You’d have to give me more than that. It could be anything.” He uttered a brief laugh. “Well, anything liquid and colored yellow, I’d guess.”
“We took the longest time to work it out, too,” Sally said. “At first, we could only see the honey and everything else took an age to figure out.”
“I sure hope no one’s keeping tabs on my browser history.” Alice shook her head. “If there’s anyone poking around in there, they’ll get quite the shock.”
“Is this a sexual thing?” Hogarth colored as he spoke the words. All of a sudden, he was the one avoiding everyone’s gaze.
“Nothing like that. As best we can figure it, the term is used as slang for some types of street drugs.”
“Along with thousands of others.” Hogarth pulled his mobile phone out of his back pocket and keyed in something with his thumb.
“I think it’s used for Amyl nitrate.” Alice felt strange just saying the words aloud, like knowing the terminology for drugs would somehow convert her into an addict.
“Poppers?” Hogarth looked up. “I’m not sure I know that one. It’s not as popular now as it was back in the seventies. The medication is still issued, I guess, but there’s a lot of other treatments for heart problems before a doctor will leap straight to that.”
“If it’s hard to get hold of, that’d just make it more popular, wouldn’t it?” Sally looked to the sergeant but all he returned to her was a shrug. “Anyway, I think it’s something else. I’m sure I’ve heard Jason use it to refer to GHB in the past.”
“The stuff they slip into drinks when you’re not looking?” Hogarth pulled his lower lip down.
“Slipping a mickey, we used to call it back in the old days,” Doug said.
“I really hope you’re using that in a figurative sense,” the sergeant barked. “Because if you’ve actually done anything along those lines, we’re going to have to talk.”
“I’d never have the guts to do something like that.” Doug’s voice sounded almost regretful and Alice kicked him in the shin. “Ow. Don’t worry, I meant it must take a stupid man or a courageous one to try a trick like that out in public.”
“Drugging people’s drinks isn’t nearly so popular as television would have you believe.” Hogarth was still fiddling with his phone, flicking through pages with his thumb. “Most of the time, when people think they’ve been drugged, they have, but it’s with alcohol and they did it to themselves.”
“Another one seemed to be cocaine dissolved in water, then used as a nasal spray.” Alice shuddered at the thought.
“That’d clean your sinuses out, good and proper,” Sally told her, tipping her a wink.
“Here we go,” Hogarth said, holding out the screen for them to see the answers. “Everything in current or past drug slang referring to anything liquid.” After they nodded, he turned the screen back to himself. “There’s actually not as many as I’d have thought.” After another few seconds of perusal, he nodded to himself and shut the phone off. “Let me guess, someone told someone else about stealing your expensive honey and someone else thought they were talking about drugs.”
“A lot of drugs,” Alice said. “Apparently, they were expecting a hundred kilos of honey to be another type of liquid gold. I don’t know the price—what do you call it?”
“The street value?”
“Yeah, I have no idea what they thought it was worth, but it must’ve been a bundle. Certainly, a heap more than they’d ever get for my honey.”
“Not that they’d fetch much for that since the silly man who
stole it didn’t even know how to get it out of the frames.” Sally pursed her lips, looking disgusted but Alice couldn’t bring herself to match the emotion. Sadness, sure, for the bees—the ones who died and the ones who’d lost their home. Annoyance, that such a premium product had gone to waste.
But in connection with Ant? No. It was hard to think ill of the dead.
Chapter Twelve
After such a long wait, Hogarth didn’t appear as happy to find out the identity as Alice had expected. He almost shouted, “How do you know Ant ended up dead in the boot of the car that Jason’s driving back from Nelson in?”
Alice chewed her bottom lip. “At the time, I think only Chester saw what happened.”
“Chester?”
“He’s my dog. He ran up to me when I got home last night and seemed more agitated than usual.”
“Is this going to be some kind of Lassie tale? Because, if it is, I can tell you right now that no animals are allowed to testify in court.”
Alice sniggered at the thought, picturing Chester sitting in the witness box, swearing on the bible. Or barking, as it would have to be. “Relax, you won’t be stuck in quite that situation. As I said, he ran up to me…”
Chester raised his head at the sound of the car approaching. His mistress had left many hours before and the man, Doug, that he sometimes followed around like a shadow wasn’t anywhere about today.
Although he knew the vehicle wasn’t the one Alice had driven away in, he cocked one ear and raised himself up on his front legs just in case she’d changed. That happened sometimes. She would leave and return with another human in a completely different car.
The ways of people were beyond his comprehension, but Chester still strained to understand. If he could only fathom what everyone was whining about in their strange language, he might have an easier job getting fed.
In fact…
As the strange car pulled up the long driveway, Chester walked over to his empty bowl and nudged it into a place right before the front doorway. He tipped his head to one side, then the other, trying to see how any human could miss it or the clear signal it sent. Deciding they couldn’t, he sat down beside it and looked at the humans getting out of the car.
It was a long vehicle, the color of the last leaves to tumble at the end of fall. A shiny coating of paint was dimpled and pockmarked in places, much like the skin of the first man to emerge from the front door.
He wore tight jeans, fraying at all different levels of his legs, and Chester looked at those with interest. Not only were they packed full of juicy smells, but they reminded him of a blanket he’d killed by tearing it to shreds—the one he kept as a trophy at the back of his dog house.
With one eye peeled for trouble, Chester stood up and trotted to the edge of the porch. Mm. Those jeans really were fragrant. It smelled like gravy might have been spilled on them quite recently, adding to the layers of sweat and grease.
With the man ignoring him, Chester crept closer, sniffing right up against his ankle. After a moment, the human took a step back, almost falling over him. He jerked away, and the other man laughed.
Since neither of them seemed bothered he was there, Chester sat down near the driveway and kept his eye on the two men. After a short discussion of meaningless grunts, they pointed to the far fields and headed off on foot.
At the first field, Chester stopped and perked his ears up. The men walked straight across the clover field—in full flower—and that just wasn’t right. The only humans allowed to do that were his mistress or Doug. If another person tried, his human owner would scream at them until they stopped.
Chester growled low in his throat. If Alice were around, she’d probably come to see what was upsetting him and give him a reward if she agreed. With no sign of her about, it would fall on his shoulders to ensure these two men left before they did any damage.
His growl increased in volume and Chester raised the hairs along his shoulders and spines until he appeared as large as he could be. These fools would soon find out he wasn’t a dog to be trifled with.
As soon as they noticed him. Yep. Any minute now.
The men crossed the line of poplars at the far side of the paddock, forded across the wide stream at the boundary, and ventured into the start of the Manuka forest. Chester now gave them his loudest ever growl, matching the grumbles from the second man who had fallen behind.
No way should they go in there. That was the protected area that even Chester wasn’t completely happy crossing into. His mistress was particular about many things but most especially about the flowering Manuka.
He checked behind him, in case the excitement had caused him to miss a car pulling up or the crunch of a bicycle wheel on gravel. But no, there was no one else arriving to help out or bark at until they came to the rescue.
It was all up to him.
Well, Chester had thought himself down and out a while back, but his mistress had taken him into a hellish place full of antiseptic scents that made his nose hurt.
At the time, he’d been almost certain it would be his final resting place, but she’d known better. Here he was now, fit as a fiddle and raring to go. The least he could do to repay her was to protect the Manuka, the hives that were gathered in the center of the forest, and the bees that were his mistress’s other true love.
Keeping his body low to the ground, Chester covered the ground to the stream edge in quick steps, slipping into the water and paddling across with his nose barely breaking the water’s top edge. He even resisted the urge to shake himself dry as soon as he stepped foot on the opposite bank. To do that risked exposure.
Instead, he took himself into a knot of closely growing plants and shook himself out of sight of the two men’s prying eyes. Not that it seemed they were on the lookout for him, anyway. When he emerged and found their trail again, they’d traveled halfway into the thicket.
Chester swapped cover for speed until he could sense the men were close by once more. He slunk along then, his movements cautious and his body sliding through the foliage without making more than a whisper of noise.
The first man burst into a fit of screaming. Not bothering to worry about whether they would hear him now, Chester motored toward the men, his hackles raised. What did they think they were doing? Trespassing on his mistress’s favorite spot and yelling until the birds flew squawking up in fright from the surrounding trees.
With disgust, the first man planted one of his boots into the middle of a hive and pushed, rocking it on its feet. A cloud of angry bees rose up, ready to die in defense of their queen. Chester followed their lead, barking as he ran full-speed at the men.
At first, there was nothing in his head but the thrill of the chase and the urge to rid the property of these foul intruders. As Chester settled into his stride and watched the two cast urgent glances full of fear over their shoulders, he glowed with enjoyment and pride.
He was doing it. He’d taken charge and these men wouldn’t darken this place again.
Halfway back to the farmhouse, he slowed down, taking the opportunity to catch his breath. The row of stitches buried under a patch of sparse fur on his chest burned with heat, reminding Chester it hadn’t been long since a cone was around his head and he couldn’t walk far, let alone run.
The men didn’t slow their pace. He’d put enough of a fright into them, they ran all the way back to their car. When he got his second wind and chased them again, he’d only closed half the distance when he heard a loud pop, like the sky itself had been torn.
One man grabbed at his chest, dropping to his knees before face-planting into the hardened dirt at the end of the driveway. Chester stopped running and paced back and forth, using all his senses to try to work out what was up. A strange odor hung in the air, similar to when men came past the property in winter, chasing after the ducks in the sky.
A gun. Not the large shooting sticks the hunters carried but something smaller, compact. It fit into the palm of the first man’s hand and he tucked
it back into his inside jacket pocket where it barely made a bump.
Now, the man heaved and rolled and twisted and lifted the dead man into the trunk. When he’d slammed the lid, he scanned the surrounding ground, moving about some shingle and dirt to cover over the marks from his deceased companion.
Chester ran forward, grabbing hold of the man’s jean cuff and shaking his head until it tore. The fury in his body was too big for him to handle. He spat out the piece of cotton and howled as the man jumped into the car and reversed it up the drive.
With fear and worry clouding his mind, Chester pawed at the ground where the dead man had fallen. He sniffed, tasting an iron tang in the air above where the dirt held traces of blood.
Had he done okay? Was he a good dog?
Chester was very frightened he hadn’t done everything he should. He ran in circles, growling and darting in to attack the packed earth with his claws, then backing up, his hair standing on end.
When Alice drove up, Chester knew she sensed at once something terrible had happened. She tried to comfort him with soothing noises and warm strokes of her hand, but Chester couldn’t accept the gestures. The man might come back at any moment. If he didn’t find a way to tell his mistress what went on in her absence, she could be in danger.
He retrieved the piece of jean cotton from the ground where he’d spat it out. When Alice stared and flicked it away with the back of her hand, he picked it up and returned it to her lap.
While she stared at him with a puzzled frown, Chester pawed at her knee, shaking his head as a reflection from a metal object affixed just below the porch guttering caught his eye. The sun hit it at just the wrong angle, piercing a beam of light directly at his face. He blinked and placed his chin on his mistress’s knee.
Alice picked up the piece of fabric and peered at it with curiosity, then turned and stared at the CCTV camera which looked straight down the driveway. Chester yawned as the activity of the day caught up with him. A lot had happened, but his mistress was home and he’d do anything to keep her safe.
Honeybee Cozy Mysteries Box Set Page 24
